Autorun from USB drive

Orion

I have a number of Portable Apps on my usb drive and I use PStart as a system tray launcher for them. Is there any way to get PStart.exe to run automatically when I stick in the USB drive? I tried autorun.inf but it appears that only works for CD/DVDs.

I found a reg hack which is supposed to enable it but it's already set on my pc and it still doesn't work. When I put in the drive it does give me the standard XP prompt asking me what to do with it. But I can't find anyway to run an app by default.

Anyone any ideas?

mr_disc

i aint tried with a USB key but may be similar as to what options u have with a CD drive :...........................

right-click on the drive icon for your CD drive, and select Properties.
choose the AutoPlay tab, and choose the desired action for each type of CD

( XP )

Orion

Nope. Tried that too

Orion

That only works if you have PStart installed locally on the hard drive. I have it running off the USB drive.

8T8

You can use autorun it just requires a bit of tinkering with the inf, all the commands are listed here at this link

For example this will load the Media Player Classic upon insertion of a USB stick which has the .exe in the root of the drive.

[autorun]
action=Run Media Player Classic
shellexecute=mplayerc.exe
*UseAutoPlay=1

*If you remove this line then it will present a menu if you keep it in it will auto load MPC automatically without prompt.

To specify a folder for an application use the action=@[filepath\]filename line.

Orion

8T8: That's certainly a major help. I've put in the lines as suggested and now it comes up in the menu at least. But it still doesn't autorun. I've tried it with and without the open line as well. I'm running XP SP2 so all of these are supported.

[autorun]
action=Run PStart
shellexecute=pstart.exe
UseAutoPlay=1
open=pstart.exe
icon=PStart.exe,1

8T8

Try removing the open=pstart.exe line you should only need the shellexecute=pstart.exe entry.

Orion

I did do that already - didn't work without it first - added it in just to see. At least I've reached the stage where I get a menu option anyway. tbh it could be this machine in work. I'll try it on my own PC at home later on and see if it works there.

8T8

Oh just in case this requires v2 of the autorun sub system which is only present on XP or later in case your work machines are earlier systems.

But I just tested pstart.exe on two different USB sticks with this autorun.inf and it loaded automatically every time on my main machine and laptop.

[autorun]
action=Pstart
shellexecute=pstart.exe
UseAutoPlay=1

Orion

The machines here are XP w/SP2. Odd. I'll try later on at home.

Trojan

Related reading:
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=95556&WT.svl=column1_1

Orion

Yeah read it before. But it's my own one and I'm the admin